Short walk - leaving Clarksville tomorrow

Did a quick thirteen miles today. It felt good to walk - I think knowing how little time we have left on this thing is helping me just put boot to pavement. I'm gonna miss all the movement I think - using my body in that way. Oh...and by the way; I weighed myself yesterday in this funky little naturalists store here in town...130 pounds. I was stunned. Addie keeps telling me I'm losing weight daily, but I didn't really think so. I've lost ten pounds in the last three weeks. It's the heat I think. Who wants to eat in weather like this. I feel fine though. Don't worry about it. Jeez, I haven't weighed 130 in probably 13 years or so, since the Nepal trip. Feels kinda good.

Anyway.


Kid talked to me last night and asked if I wanted to try to get a ten-miler in before we finished up. "Hell yeah," I said.

I don't know if I can run ten miles or not...but I get to try and that's cool. I'm a pretty slow runner, so ten miles means at least two hours on the road in motion. We are allowed to walk if we need too, and I might need to...we shall see. Don't know when that's gonna happen, but I'll let you know how it goes.

The walk in itself was uneventful. Although I was amused by this one thing. You remember how I wrote, a couple of days ago, about this deep conversation I had with Ray?

Here's how this one went today.

"Hey, Nikki. I was thinking about something and I wanted to ask you about it."

"Yeah, sure."

"Well, I don't know if you have these here; but you know those caramel bars?"

"What?"

"Caramel bars. You know, with the caramel inside?"

"Like Rolos?"

"Well, yeah, like Rolos, but their flat, eh?"

"Yeah..I know what you're talking about."

"Well. I was thinking...how do they get that caramel in there?"

It cracked me up. We were about 45 minutes into our walk miles and everyone had been really quiet all morning. Sometimes someone will clue you into what they are thinking about, walking down the road. I love it when people are thinking about completely random stuff. And thinking hard about it.

We asked Maggie, cause we didn't know.

"Well, there are these teeny-tiny elves..."



I took this picture of Sunshine. Asked him to give me a Sunshine look and this is what he came up with. One of my favorite quotes from the last week involves him.

"I'd take you a lot more seriously if you took off my running shorts."
- Addie to Sunshine



We head to Alberta, VA tomorrow and then to Chester, just south of Richmond. We have ten days before we reach our base camp in D.C.

Yikes.